Friday, May 22, 2015

Splash

Released Year: 1984

Directed by Ron Howard

Casted by:

Tom Hanks as Allen Bauer

Daryl Hannah as Madison

John Candy as Freddie Bauer

Eugene Levy as Dr. Walter Kornbluth

Story:

As an eight-year-old boy, Allen Bauer is vacationing with his family near Cape Cod. While taking a sight-seeing tour on a small boat, he gazes into the ocean and sees something below the surface that fascinates him, while his older brother Freddie Bauer is walking around the boat fascinated by the women. Allen jumps into the water, even though he cannot swim. He grasps the hands of a girl who is inexplicably under the water with him and an instant connection forms between the two. Allen can now breathe under water as he is in the hands of a mermaid. However, Allen is pulled to the surface by the deck hands and the two are separated, though apparently no one else sees the girl. After the ferry moves off, Allen looks back at the girl, who dives underwater showing her mermaid's tail. Allen comes to believe the encounter was a near-death hallucination, but his bond with the mermaid proves so strong that his subsequent relationships with women fail as he seeks the connection he felt with the mermaid.

Years later, Allen is a co-owner of a wholesale fruit and vegetable business in New York City with his womanizing older brother Freddie. Depressed after his latest breakup, Allen returns to Cape Cod, where he encounters eccentric scientist Dr. Walter Kornbluth and again falls into the sea. He wakes up on a beach with a headache where he encounters a beautiful naked woman with long blonde hair, a necklace with a lion medal, and the inability to talk who, unknown to him, is the mermaid he met as a boy (her tail transforms into legs when it becomes dry). After kissing him, she dives into the sea and leaves Allen to return home. Kornbluth, while diving in order to seek proof of strange sea creatures, also encounters the mermaid in her sea form, causing him to become obsessed with finding her again.

The mermaid finds Allen's wallet in the water and goes to a sunken boat where she finds a map. Using Allen's wallet to find where he is from, she then decides to find him in New York. She comes ashore naked at the Statue of Liberty, where she is arrested for indecent exposure. Using information from Allen's wallet, the mermaid gets released into his care. She learns how to speak English from watching television, and says her name is a high-pitched chirp sound in the language of mermaids. She's eager to see a big city for the first time in her life, and she chooses the name Madison from a Madison Avenue sign. She tells Allen that she will be in New York for "six fun-filled days when the moon is full" and if she stays longer, she can never go home again (the reason for this is unexplained). Despite Madison's occasional unusual behavior, she and Allen fall in love. Allen proposes to Madison, but she declines and runs away. After pondering her reason for coming to the city in the first place, Madison returns to Allen and agrees to marry him, with the added promise of telling him the truth about herself at an upcoming dignitary dinner to welcome the President of the United States.

Meanwhile, Kornbluth, realizing that the naked woman at Liberty Island was the mermaid he had encountered, pursues the couple trying to expose her as a mermaid by splashing her with water. Many attempts are unsuccessful, and Kornbluth ends up with multiple injuries including a badly broken arm and whiplash. When he is finally successful at the dignitary dinner, the exposed mermaid is taken in by government scientists led by Kornbluth's cold-hearted former colleague and rival Dr. Ross for examination. However, Kornbluth regrets his actions after he learns that Madison is due to be studied and dissected, as he just wanted to prove that he wasn't crazy.

Allen is shocked by Madison's secret and when he denies his love for her, Freddie lashes out at him, telling his brother how happy he was with her. Allen confronts a guilt-ridden Kornbluth, who agrees to help him.

Impersonating Swedish scientists, Freddie and Allen enter the lab with Kornbluth and smuggle Madison outside. Madison makes it back to the ocean and tells Allen that he can survive under water as long as he is with her. Allen realizes she was the young mermaid he had met so long before. The United States military arrive to recapture her, ignoring Allen's demands to let her be free. Although Madison warns him that if he comes to live in the sea he can't return, he jumps into the water and they elude their pursuers. Together they swim along the ocean floor toward what appears to be an underwater kingdom.

L² Scored: 7.5/10

L² Comment:

This movie starts well, but towards the ending part, it become a bit too fast. First, can't feel how much Allen missed Madison and got the desire to save her; Second, issit a bit too fast that Dr Kornbluth joined in the saving team without trying to fight for his right to participate in the experiment on the mermaid which he took risk on?

Overall the other parts are still good. Daryl Hannah is so so beautiful, I have been watching her "High Spirit" a lot of times before, never wonder she can look so hot in naked too lol~